As Just a Jeep Guy used to say, “Politics can leave a bad taste in your mouth,” so here’s a palate cleanser before we get started.
At the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Mike Huckabee, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said in a February speech, “Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’”
In a Friday interview with radio host Steve Deace, Huckabee said he would “take nothing back from that speech,” from the speech he gave. Huckabee told Deace he was “kind of glad” the video of his remarks made the rounds online.
“I’m kind of glad it’s posted because people, if they watch the whole clip, what they’re going to see is that I’m giving a commonsense answer to the insanity that’s going on out there,” Huckabee said. “Because I hear people, everybody wants to be politically correct, everybody wants to be loved by the media and loved by the left and loved by the elitists. But, you know, I know I’m not going to be, so let’s just get it over with. I’d rather be a commonsense candidate for people who did take their brains to work today.”
Huckabee tries to sound like a folksy good ol’ boy, but merely comes off as ignorant. He is just one of many Republicans on an anti-intellectual crusade pandering to the Tea Party’s dumbing down of America. Republicans, most of them anyway, do not want to court the intellectuals of America because they would see through their idiotic rhetoric. I blame the majority of this anti-intellectualism on Fox News, but the news media in general have lowered there standards because of 24-hour news channels. Some days are not newsworthy, and they invent stories to be blown out of proportion, and viewers watch with rapt attention.
Republican, especially this crop of presidential candidates, seem to be trying to see who can reach the height of stupidity and offensiveness. Huckabee certainly doesn’t hold a monopoly on stupid and insensitive.
Speaking to a group of pastors in Washington on Thursday, another presidential candidate Rand Paul said that a moral crisis is leading people to believe that same-sex marriage is acceptable. There is a “moral crisis that allows people to think there would be some other sort of marriage,” aside from traditional marriage, Paul said. I personally think that the high rate of divorce in America is a much greater moral crisis than same-sex marriage. Furthermore, for decades, homophobes have preached about the for cation and promiscuity of gay men, yet marriage would allow for same-sex couples to be in loving legally binding relationships. And gay men are not the most promiscuous. All one needs to do is to listen to a group of teenagers or college students and you would see young people having sex with little attachment or morality. The moral crisis of America has nothing to do with same-sex marriage. In fact, same-sex marriage would solve what many critics of American sexuality have long considered a moral crisis: premarital sex.
Republican Gov. Chris Christie said that if one of his four children came out as gay, he would “grab them and hug them and tell them I love them.” He would also tell them “that Dad believes that marriage is between one man and one woman,” he said. […] “My children understand that there are going to be differences of opinion in our house and in houses all across this state and across this country,” Christie said. What an awesome guy (see my eyes roll).
Moving on, there is Ted Cruz, good for a laugh if nothing else. He seems to believe that same-sex marriage is a threat to our very freedom: “If the citizens of the state of Iowa or the citizens of the state of Texas want to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman … the states have the constitutional authority to do so and the federal government and unelected judges cannot set aside the democratically elected legislature’s reasonable decisions to enact and protect traditional marriage,” Cruz told radio host Jan Mickelson. The 2016 presidential candidate added, “If the courts were following the Constitution, we shouldn’t need a new amendment, but they are, as you put it quite rightly, making it up right now and it’s a real danger to our liberty.” I’m guessing that Cruz doesn’t believe the Fourteenth Amendment is an actual part of the Constitution. Cruz also believes, “There is no place for gays or atheists in my America. None. Our Constitution makes that clear.” Cruz just continues to spout ignorance that God approves of child molestation, but not homosexuality when he said, “While there may have been an age difference, Josh Duggar’s transgressions are far less an affront to God than what gays do to each other.”
And then there’s Jeb Bush. Of late, he’s made some attempts to paint himself as supportive of LGBT rights. When running for governor of Florida, in 1994, he was sounding a rather different note. During his first and unsuccessful bid for governor in 1994, Bush argued in an editorial that LGBT people do not deserve special legal protection. “We have enough special categories, enough victims, without creating even more,” he wrote. In the editorial, published in the Miami Herald that summer, Bush drew a parallel between legal protection for gays and the question, “[Should] sodomy be elevated to the same constitutional status as race and religion? My answer is No.” “The statement that the governor must stand up for all people on all matters is just silly,” Bush wrote, arguing that government does not defend every Floridian “with equal verve and enthusiasm.” He listed a string of examples: “Polluters, pedophiles, pornographers, drunk drivers, and developers without proper permits.”
We can’t leave out the Republicans “intellectual” darling, Dr. Ben Carson, who thinks being gay is a choice, “Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question,” Carson said. He mentioned LGBTQ people, pedophiles, and bestiality in the same sentence, as if they are all part of the same group and should be treated the same way. “No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association], be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition. So it’s not something that’s against gays, it’s against anybody who wants to come along and change the fundamental definitions of pillars of society. It has significant ramifications,” he said. And when he tried to explain his comments, he made zero sense. “There is no group. I wasn’t equating those things, I don’t think they’re equal. Just, you know, if you ask me for apple and I give you an orange you would say, well that’s not an orange. And then I say, that’s a banana, that’s not an apple either. And there’s a peach, that’s not an apple, either,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that I’m equating the banana and the orange and the peach. And in the same way I’m not equating those things. My point was that once we start changing the definitions, then where do we stop?” And in one of the statements I find most offensive, Carson thinks that people who support same-sex marriage are trying to get rid of the Bible. “Think about the implications,” he said. “When people come along and try to change the definition of marriage, they are directly attacking the relationship between God and his people,” Carson said. “And that’s the reason it’s so important for them to change the definition, because if you can get rid of that, you can get rid of everything else in the Bible too.”. I think that Carson would benefit from reading my Sunday posts, but from the idiocy of the statements he’s made, I doubt he could understand it.
Last, but not the least idiotic, we come back to good old Mike Huckabee. To his credit, he’s never tried terribly hard to conceal how wretched he is when it comes to LGBT matters. Huckabee says that expecting Christians to accept same-sex marriage is “like asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.” He also called homosexuality part of a lifestyle, like drinking and swearing. . . .”I don’t drink alcohol, but gosh — a lot of my friends, maybe most of them, do. You know, I don’t use profanity, but believe me, I’ve got a lot of friends who do. Some people really like classical music and ballet and opera — it’s not my cup of tea,” Huckabee said. Oh, and just let me say, I’ve always believed what my granny taught when she said that if you use a word to replace another, it’s just as bad. So Mr. Huckabee, saying gosh, by granny’s interpretation, is taking the Lord’s name in vain. That’s pretty pitiful for a Baptist preacher.
Six potential candidates, and not a single intelligent nor accepting statement among them. When it comes to LGBT issues, as with most issues, the Republican candidates are happy to take the retrograde position. That doing so tramples the rights of the LGBT community seems of little importance. Once again, they have combined political expedience and cheap moralizing to arrive at a stance of cruelty and divisiveness. Nice job guys, and it’s only going to get worse as the campaign heats up over the next year.
